


For Want Of a Prompt

by Trekkele



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Chapter warnings, Enterprise shenanigans, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, M/M, archived for convenience, as per usual, bark whatney space puppy, bones being awesome, crossposted from tumblr, jim being a disaster, jim being awesome, nyota being queen of the universe, star trek aos: the sitcom edition, t'ria komosness (oc)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 11,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trekkele/pseuds/Trekkele
Summary: a collection of the flash fics i wrote when prompted on tumblr, spanning about a year up to this point. Archived for your convenience and mine.Chapters will be titles and come with individual warnings, rating is mostly for canon-level violence and language.
Comments: 37
Kudos: 54





	1. Jim and Uhura, Medical Emergency

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space
> 
> Let’s suppose a situation comes up where Jim has to do first aid on Bones for a change. Does he panic a little? Does he go calm and detached and get the job done with unnerving efficiency? 
> 
> Thoughts?  
> Look, what I’m really trying to say is: “Someone write me a ficlet with Jim in medical gloves going entirely detached and clinical and scaring the hell out of everyone around him as he just takes care of business and then completely freaking out later.” 
> 
> My reaction: 'well fuck i cant NOT write this.'
> 
> Warnings: medical stuff vagued about in the background, some brief description of injuries by carnivorous plants.

Uhura had known Jim for four years, three months, and about 15 days. The precise dates were _not_ provided by her Vulcan boyfriend, because she was perfectly capable of being scarily accurate on her own. More so, in fact, since she never got dragged down by statistics and had _flair_ thank you very much.

However, she had known Jim Kirk long enough to consider him a good friend, one of her best. She knew his tics, the things that made him twitch and get quieter and the things he should never, ever be teased about.

She thought she knew him pretty well, even with all the thing he kept tucked into himself.

It was supposed to be a simple away mission. It was always supposed to be simple. Of course, no one counted on the sentient plants. Semi-sentient? Carnivorous? Whatever their exact classification was, no one had counted on them wrapping thick green leaves around the CMO and dragging tiny green hooks into his torso.

Dragging him out had been the way part. There was still those curved bits of plant, deep cuts in his sides that they needed to clean before anything else and of course, of course that’s when the comm signal gave out.

Why was nothing ever simple.

Jim was the first one to bounce back, hands on his knees and breathing sharp. “Right. Status.”

“Ensign R'kora has located Dr. McCoys tricorder and emergency kit. Ensign Nehn and I have started working on comms signal. Lt. Uhura is the only other crew member with the relevant training to help tend to the doctor.”

Jim froze, as if finally realizing that this time _Len_ was the one bleeding. He swallowed, and his shoulders straightened.

R'kora dropped the medkit on the ground, her species unused to the atmospheric changes this planet had. Since they were never supposed to be here for so long, it hadn’t been considered a concern. Poor kid.

Jim knelt in the sand, snapping the sterile med gloves over hands that she could swear had been shaking not two seconds before.

“Uhura, hand me the hypo with the blue cap,” the captain said, and she’d never heard his voice sound empty before. Jim was always full of something, spite or shenanigans or the cosmic levels of bullshittery necessary to keep a ship running. There was always something, some quiet thing at the edge of voice, teasing and bright and she’d learned to read it like a road sign over the years.

It was empty now.

She handed him the hypo, keeping her eyes on the tricorder and pretending the sound of his voice wasn’t rattling around her head like an echoing train, empty and cold. The tiny part of her that was more human then Starfleet, the one that recognized danger better then any instrument on the ship, was sitting up in terror.

Because while she knew Jim Kirk, she did not know this cold professional who could pick blood and foreign bone out of his best friend without blinking.

When she met his eyes, they were empty too.

* * *

Len is fine. He was always going to be, probably, most likely, it’s best not to think about it, but now he was 100% fine and groggy from the medication Christine had jammed into him at the first opportunity. Jim had hovered, hands stuffed into his pockets and face so smooth a mask Nyota thinks he might have painted it on when she wasn’t looking.

He disappears, after Len falls asleep, and she doesn’t realize until she’s wandering the halls at random and lands at the observation deck near the officers quarters.

There's a window sweeping the room from ceiling to floor, a curved bridge to the universe they’re exploring and a clear barrier between the black and those that travel it.

She finds him tucked against the far wall, hands twisting around an old teddy bear she doesn’t recognize and head buried in his knees.

Uhura knows him. She’s known him for close to five years now, so there are things she can’t understand about him but takes in stride, like friends do.

“Plants.” He croaks, after maybe a minute or maybe an hour of silence. “always betrayed by damn salads.”

They laugh, because _seriously_ , sentient, carnivorous plants the size of shuttles, but he curls into her side at the slightest invitation and comes shivering apart.

(Relevant tags: the teddy bear belongs to a kid from Tarsus who had a delayed allergic reaction to the fungus)


	2. Jim, Disassociation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space  
> MORE ANGST DISCUSSION TIME!!! 
> 
> Jim Kirk and dissociation. Go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: character disassociates

The first time Jim dissociates at the Academy, it’s during a lecture and no he doesn’t know why, really Bones, it was a weird one time thing he must have stayed up too late reading that article on the Romulan engines they recovered, it’s _fine_.

(it has nothing to do with the Professors voice, or how it grates over words like culture and food and 21 century ideals. He tests out of that class 48 hours later)

* * *

The second time Jim has a dissociative episode he’s with Gaila in the library, and someone behind them dropped a stack of books at precisely the right angle and the sound bounces off his skull and through his toes and he needs to _go_.

When he blinks back into existence Gaila is munching on a pack of almonds, blue eyes watching him and the way he taps each finger to the top of his thumb, and breaths, in and out.

He swallows heavy, throat rough and angry from memory. She chews, obnoxious, steady, and without judgement.

The pack of almonds is coloured red, like cheap arcrylic paint, and yellow, like the cover of ‘The Yellow Brick Road’ he threw at Sam when they argued. Gaila reaches, slowly, and takes one of his hands in hers, turning it palm up.

Pouring a little less then half into his cupped hand she starts singing, very quietly, and very gently, and he doesn’t need to say anything at all.

* * *

The third time he dissociates at the Academy, there is a memorial, and a speech, and a reminder that he will never live up to what was lost for him.


	3. Bark Whatney, Space Puppy (prt 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ptompt: doctorginsberg asked:
> 
> Okay but Jim with adorable puppies
> 
> beauty-grace-outer-space answered:
> 
> I see this and I raise you: Jim is assigned a service dog once people start becoming aware of the level of trauma he’s been through. 
> 
> Me: invents a dog oc and instantly falls in love

Buried deep, deep, so _very_ deep down in her file, is a police report almost apologetic in its tone. It still manages to make it clear that one Uhura, Nyota, age 16, put three men in the hospital. While the report goes on to admit that these people had it coming, she would still have to appear before a judge and explain why. It is rather telling, however, that this is as far as the incident seems to go.

The only current evidence for such an occurrence is Uhura’s occasional and absolutely _blinding_ disregard for authority. Captain Kirk would be a star witness to this, if he wasn’t A. Uhura’s biggest fan, and B. Currently laid up recovering from radiation poisoning.

Nyota has always liked puzzles. She liked putting something together while she took it apart, finding out what made it tick even as she uncovered the little gears inside. Jim was one of those puzzles that she never quite understood. What she did know, was that this probably wasn’t the first time he had been stuck in a hospital half dead.

And based on the reactions of those who had known him longest, this hadn’t even been the worst of those.

There were only that many circular reports she could give the admiralty, only that many times they could ask the same questions and get the same answers. So when Archer had stopped her outside one of the hearings, asking her for something he could _do_ , she already had a list prepared.

Which was why she was currently strolling down the hospital corridors with a very squirmy (and adorable) puppy tucked under one arm. The hospital rules said animals were forbidden on the premises. Uhura’s face said she didn’t care. Sometimes a blatant disregard for authority was useful.

Archer doubted anyone else could pull this off.

‘This’ was trying its hardest to lick the rank striped off Uhura’s sleeve, but kept getting her own overly large paws in her face. Jim was sleeping, mostly, when she got to his room, only one doctor trying to stop her on the way there. He hadn’t tried for very long.

The puppy finally wiggled out pf her grasp just as she reached the bed. Jim blinked, dazed and sleepy and smiling loosely at the ball of floof trying to attack his blanket.

“Who… who’s this pretty girl then?” She ignored how weak his voice was, how it slipped in and out of the conversation. He would do the same, she knows.

“Admiral Archer decided you need some common sense. Apparently in his opinion that means adopting a puppy,” she grinned at his confusion, and fascination with fluff in his lap. “Congratulations its a girl.”

You’d have to be blind to miss the tension that had been hovering over his shoulders the last few days. Even with Harrison in custody, with Marcus dead, with his family gathering around him for as long as he needed, it was still _there_. Nyota thinks it might have always been, and they just missed it before.

Its bleeding out now, dropping away with every flick of her tail and the puppy grin that he got when he rubbed her ears.

“She needs as name, Jim. Got any ideas?” Uhura felt something settle in her as well. It was never easy, following a man like Kirk. He made you love him and you never realized till it was too late, he led you to hell and then dragged you out, and then he made sure you were alright while pretending there wasnt a knife buried in his back. But he made it worth it. It always was.

“Bark Whatney.” She laughed, she couldn’t help it, and the grin he gave her was bright as the stars.

(relevant additions:

  
beauty-grace-outer-space  
Oh my god– oh my god.

Now how do they teach the dog to bother Bones?

  
trekkele  
Bark Whatney thinks Bones is the best thing since puppy treats and doesn’t need to be trained. The thing she does where she rolls over on her back and gives him puppy eyes is, however, 100% Jim’s fault.

Bones loves it and refuses to admit there’s a dog bed in his office for her. Its there for storage everyone stop talking about it.

  
beauty-grace-outer-space  
How often is she in Bones’ office? Like if Jim is on the bridge, is she with Bones? 

  
trekkele  
She’s either with Jim on the bridge (starmapping missions, times when they know it will be quiet) in Bone’s office/visiting patients in sickbay, or in the classrooms with the StarFleet brats who swear they can concentrate with Bark Whatney in the room, they promise. Star Scouts Honor.

(spoiler: they cannot. at least not at first.)

Occasionally she stays in Jim’s quarters or wonders around the rec rooms, because the entire crew adores her and spoils her rotten.)


	4. Bark Whatney, Space Puppy (prt 2)

Sulu had been sitting on the floor for the last half hour, and gave no indication that he would be getting up soon. Jim might have been more worried about that if he hadn’t been watching Sulu coo at Bark Whatney for most of that time, and battling a faint sense of jealousy besides.

Moslty because Bones wouldn’t let him get out of bed to play with the puppy, so all he could do was watch her charm his crew into baby-talking piles of mush.

“Who’s the bestest girl, huh? Who’s the greatest little StarFleet fur ball in the galaxy?” Sulu rubbed Bark’s tummy, dangling a bit of IV piping over her nose.

“Yes you are! You are!”

Jim wasn’t sure if he wanted to giggle uncontrollably or take a holo and post it to the group chat. He settled on doing both, knowing Uhura especially would appreciate watching her choice in puppy be pampered.

“Ben said he’ll pick me up.” Sulu didn’t even look away from the squirmy pup, making kissy noises at Bark’s oversized paws.

Jim perked up, because knowing Ben, he would bring some sort of get-well-soon food and anything that wasn’t hospital food was interesting at this point.

“He’s bring Demora too, in case you need some undivided attention.” Sulu smirked, knowing his daughter adored her Uncle Jim and that the feeling was mutual. Jim would move heavan and earth for his niece. (And considering it was _Jim_ , that was less of a metaphor then it should be.)

“I bet Demora will love Bark.” It was an offhanded comment, meant as comfortable small talk between friends, but the truth was much, much worse. ‘Lethally cute’ worse.

Bark and Demora spent five minutes staring at each other, and the rest of the visit rolling around and chasing each other, clumsy crawling around the room.

“I think we need a puppy,” Sulu breathed, heart eyes so large Jim wondered if he could even see.

“I’ll let you borrow mine sometimes.” Jim whispered back, winking at Ben’s greatful smirk. One could only handle so much cute at a time, after all. Not to mention how destructive cute could be.


	5. Bark Whatney, Space Puppy (prt 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space
> 
> Jim gets triggered and shuts down in his quarters. His service dog knows she’s supposed to get Bones, but Bones is in surgery and she can’t get to him. So she grabs the first person she comes across. 
> 
> Aaaand go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: character has a panic attack

There’s lots of things they don’t tell about when you join StarFleet. The triple gamma shifts for example.

“Join up, they said. It’s a mans life, they said.” Tri’a muttered while stumbling past the turbo lift. “What a bunch of nonsense. Oh _fuck_ , I sound like Dad.” He laughed, dragging a hand down his face and leaning against the wall.

No one likes their job when it gets them out of bed at zero dark fuck-who-knows in the morning. At least the mess served pancakes at all hours.

It’s the little things.

Like the captain’s dog, trotting down the corridor like an elegant battering ram of fluff. Everyone loved Bark Whatney, it was hard not to. Even when she got fur all over their dress uniforms.

“Hey there Lt. Fluffer, how’s your night going?” Later, he would swear all he had done was try to scratch her ears. Whatney apparently had her own plans, taking his hand gently in her mouth and tugging.

Tri’a was tired, but technically outranked. Also, as far as he knew the captain’s dog was trained to do this only in very specific circumstances, which meant the Captain was in trouble, which meant Tri’a was being summoned to help.

Like his night couldn’t get more complicated.

The captain’s quarters weren’t far off, not by the route Whatney was using, and the door was (thankfully) programmed to respond to her.

He wondered idly how long it had taken Scotty and Lt. Vro to fix that up.

It was dark. For a second he wondered if this was an elaborate set up, if he was getting career sabatoged by a dog, and then he realized that was the lack of sleep talking. Hopefully.

“Lights, 20 percent.” It seemed disrespectful, his voice a whisper, but he stopped caring when he spotted the captain, head tucked between his knees in a corner of the room.

No one knew what had happened on the mission. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out, with McCoy scheduling three surgeries one after the other and the Captain looking so pale it was ghostly.

The only good thing they had to say was that everyone survived. Hendorff had just looked darkly at the captains table and muttered “at what cost?”

No one had to ask who had been paying.

“Captain Kirk?” Tri’a wished he had payed more attention during training. He doesn’t think it actually would have helped, but it would have been nice to blame shock and not his own idiocy.

“Captain Kirk are you alright?” Such a _stupid_ question, he cringed, but took another step forward, Wahtney circling him one more time before going back to the captain.

“The Lieutenant found me in the hall, asked me to come here. Is there -“ he hesitated, watching the captain shift, placing one hand on Wahtneys back and lifting his head, a little.

It was strange, seeing that dead look in the captain’s eyes. It was _wrong_.

“Is there anything I can do?” His fists were clenched behind his back. It wasn’t fair, the things they didn’t tell you about StarFleet.

“Tri’a, isn’t it? I’m so sorry Whatney bothered you -“

“Sir!” Tri’a resolutely ignored the fact that he had just interrupted a senior officer. After barging into his quarters. It was too late now.

“My father served during the Klingon Incidents. I - I remember he used to take us fishing. On days like. Days like this.”

He felt stupid. Standing before the Captain and trying to tell him he _understood_ , if only second hand.

The Captain smiled, washed out, pale, but a _smile_. “Did he now? Why don’t you tell me about him.”

So he did, cross-legged on the captain’s floor and bringing tea, ‘not from the replicator Tri’a, I keep the real stuff in that cabinet, have you ever had replicated honey, its _awful_ ’. Telling stories about growing up in new places every year, his family moving around on adventures when they could.

There’s lots of things they don’t tell you about when you join StarFleet. Tri’a thinks that might not always be a bad thing.


	6. Winona Kirk takes No Shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this was requested by grace, based on a post i reblogged about characters getting angry on each others behalf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: child abuse, blood, gun/phaser violence, and winona losing her shit at her dickbag brother.
> 
> zeeskeit = (yiddish) means sweetheart/ literally means sweet-thing, you are a 'sweetness', term of endearment

The bag hit the hardwood floor with a self satisfied thud, the way inanimate objects sometimes do when they approve of your destination.

Winona stretched, reaching her hands up to the kitchen ceiling and wondering why it was so quiet. She had wanted it to be a surprise, this unexpected shore leave, but instead of finding Frank and Jimmy eating dinner like she though they would be, the house was a hunted sorted of still.

She didn’t like it.

She never liked it, the silence, and anything less then the hum of a double engine at warp 3 was silent to her. It’s been a while, but she knows Jimmy loves that noise too. If they’re lucky, the Shenzhou would still be docked when they picked up Sam, and she could sneak her boys up for a quick tour.

What Phillipa wouldn’t know couldn’t hurt her right?

She brushed past the table, popping a green bean into her mouth and letting the smell of Iowa dust clean the engine grease from her nose, hardly noticing the glass on the floor. Until it crunched under her boots, shattering the storm-calm hush as she stood in the doorway. Looks like someone broke a glass.

It’s hard, not to get angry. Frank knows better then to leave glass where someone could step on it, and the hollow feeling at the base of her spine fills with worry. It’s too quiet, and there’s blood on the floor.

There’s blood on her kitchen floor.

Win forgets that she’s meant to be surprising them. She forgets the glass under her feet and the ache in her bones and the 16 hours of engine grease that’s tattooed between her fingernails, because there’s blood on the floor and there are drops leading out, to the living room where she used to bury her boys under blanket forts and read them fairy tales by flashlight.

She stumbles, not blindly, eyes glued to the tiny drops of red she follows, into the couch, and finds out that breathing is only optional. It better be, because right now she _can’t_.

She finds Jimmy huddled behind the couch, and she wants to rip her lungs out with a spanner and scream.

He hasn’t even noticed her. He just curls tighter, whimpering into the arm he’s cradled close to his chest, bare feet stained red and a bruise under one muddied blue eye.

“Jimmy.”

He blinks at her.

Something in her breaks, than, again. Something in her wakes up and screams, and she’s glad, viciously, ruthlessly, glad, that the phaser in her boot was locked on the highest setting.

Her knees hit the floor, a fine layer of dust beneath them. Jimmy still hasn’t moved, and she’s scared to touch him. Scared he might disappear or fall apart if she does.

“Jimmy baby,” she reaches out, slowly, and he still flinches, still leans away before he leans foward. She’s careful when she tilts his chin up, examining his eye and the cut on his forehead and the way his arm is swollen and covering his abdomen. The bootmark on his t-shirt. The cuts on his feet.

She sees them all.

“Ziskeit. _Who did this to you”_ he doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to, eyes closing tight as the screen door slams shut. She knows how Frank walks - heavy, like the world owes him ground to stomp on because he exists. She doesn’t move, just turns her head and dares him, dares him to lie to her. Again.

Frank never was the smart one.

“Winona! Where’s that useless brat of yours!?” He scratches his stomach, not realizing that Winona’s leaning over someone. Not realizing that her fist is wrapped around a phaser.

Not till the blast hits him.

The sheriff, when he arrives, not five minutes before the ambulance, blinks heavy at the heap that is Frank Davis. Winona is sitting, legs crossed over her brothers back and son wrapped in her arms as she sings him a lullaby that may or may not be engine schematics.

“How unfortunate.” He drawls, corn having time to grow between his words. “That Mr. Davis chose to resist arrest. And attempted to harm an officer of the law.”

Winona glares at him, eyes burning like twin stars. About to burn a galaxy for the crime of existing too close.

“How unfortunate.” She agrees.


	7. time goes by, and still Jim Kirk gets hotter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space  
> Talk to me about everyone realizing that Jim looks a little less like this:   
> (image of Jim 'Absolute Baby' Kirk in 2009)
> 
> and a little more like this:   
> (image of Jim 'Professor Indian Jones Affect in Motion' Kirk from Beyond press tour)
> 
> because they’re all growin’ up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was an image prompt, so i did the best i could. title is a reference to the imagine dragons song, stuck (time goes by and still i'm stuck on you) because this was supposed to be funny 'oh no he's hot' but instead it came out poetic.

See, the thing is, time passes slowly.

Which might _sound_ obvious, but sometimes out in the black it doesn’t feel like time is passing at all. There’s the stars, and the empty expanse of the unknown, and your crew.

The ship is an island, alone except for the buzzing comms and the reports they send back, like little bottles bobbing in the black - we are here, and here, and here.

So time passes, crawling, and then your captain celebrates his 30th birthday, and you send a message home because your baby sister is turning 22, and you wonder if the time has been swallowed up like parsecs in a warp engine.

It was easy, out there, where the uniforms stayed the same and the people you saw changed in increments so gradual it was like they didn’t exist. It was easy, to forget that time was passing.

So maybe they missed it, when Jim’s wide eyed grin turned into something a little softer. Maybe they missed it, when the supernova in his heart cooled into the solid red star they orbited. Maybe they woke up one day and realized the wunderkind had become a Captain, one who would drag them to the edge of the galaxy and back, laughing like a solar flare all the way.

Or maybe it had always been there, buried under quicksilver and mercury.

They had been recalled, rather dramatically, about 3 weeks into their shore leave on Earth. The Captain was the last to arrive, gliding into the conference room like he hadn’t been pulled off his first vacation in years for something someone else could have definitely taken care of.

It was easy, they think, to miss the moment Kirk had become The Captain. Or maybe there hadn’t been one definitive moment at all.

It was unmistakable now, the salt and pepper in his trimmed beard showing more age then the Captain ever had. Uhura remembered, faintly, Jim saying that he wanted to try something new. It suited him, the same way the command gold did.

Or he just carried it like it should.

It was easy to forget, out there, where time was measured in galaxies forming and stars dying, that for people time was only a finite resource. That eventually the stars would move on without them, that someone else would take up the counting of so countless a thing.

And for now, they would orbit in their own time, however short it may be. For now, the stars were theirs.


	8. Captain James T Kirk, PR Stunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompy: beauty-grace-outer-space  
> Alright @trekkele, @anxiously-going let’s talk about Jim Kirk absolutely running himself into the ground during his first year as captain because, despite what some may think, he does care and he is terrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: unhealthy expectations

They notice. Of course they notice, everyone and their sainted nana is keeping a close eye on the Enterprise, the first PR stunt on this scale in nearly fifty years.

That’s what the brass calls it, derision and regret in equal measure. 

The cadets call it “The Enterprise”, with the sort of breathy tones that only true believers can achieve, because Kirk’s _done it_ , he made it, and it isn’t that amazing?

The professors, those with their heads on their shoulders and not firmly tucked up their asses, call it …well, they also call it “The Enterprise”, but fondly, because they remember Jim Kirk as being a hard worker, brilliant, and helpful, and only a little bit smug about it.

His crew don’t call it anything. (Maybe home, after awhile, after enough time has passed.)

In the beginning, enough of them agree with the brass to make some reports stiffer and more condescending then necessary. And either their captain doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. or maybe, some of them realize, he thinks he deserves it.

And eventually they switch to the professors point of view - Kirk is a crazy son-of-a-star ship who doesn’t know when to back down or shut up but damn if he isn’t good at his job. It takes almost a full year before they realize they’ve been talking about Captain Kirk the way some people talk about stars - breathless adulation and awe at their existence, combined with exasperation because why do they _do_ that?

It’s not often someone ascends from ‘possible nepotistic idiot’ to ‘possible force of nature’ in a year. It’s rather impressive.

To his bridge crew, the ones who interact with him daily and spend as much time with him off the clock as they do on it, it’s terrifying.

It starts with Jim yawning in a meeting once, and blushing furiously while he apologizes. It ends, well, that’s the problem isn’t it? It won’t end.

Jim ignores the way his hands always shake, from stress and lack of rest and reporting to SFC twice a week. He ignores the weight he keeps losing, and the sleep he’s not getting and the way his crew keeps trying to get close, trying to help.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” Len tells him one afternoon, the officers rec room suddenly still.

“I won’t, I know my limits.” They expected him to deny it, is the thing. They expected him to argue, to claim he was fine. This steady acceptance, the way he agrees casually, is so much worse.

Jim doesn’t even look up from the reports he’s reviewing. 

“Then you know that you need to slow down, don’t you?” Len has never taken Jim’s answers at face value. He’s not going to start now.

“I can’t” another report gets signed and set aside. “Bullshit,” Len snorts, refilling Jim’s glass.

“No, really.” he looks up, eyes tired and wide. And maybe just as scared as they are. “What do you think is going to happen if I fail, Bones? Do you think they’ll just demote me and send you on your way? Do you think I’m the only casualty in this stunt? If I fail, _all of you_ , go down with me.”

“I have to play their game, Bones, because right now they have all the cards. But I don’t need to let them _win_ , not if I can play by the rules they set up.”

So no, his bridge crew doesn’t call it anything, not a PR stunt or an earned reward or an _honor_ , awarded to a hero.

They just watch as it slows eats him away, helpless even as it kills him


	9. Jim and Uhura, Triggers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space asked:
> 
> Jim Kirk and triggers. That is all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: character lists triggers of another character, insects,

Uhura isn’t sure when she started the list. She must have at some point, since she has it, but can never quiet pin down the date or time.

 _One_ : _insects._

_Specifically, jumping ones. Spiders he has no problem with, or flies, but insects that jump up, or at people, seem to make Jim nervous. Its during some study thing on the campus lawn that a cricket hops onto Jim’s padd, sending him up and running. He threw over some excuse about advisors meetings, and no one else seemed to notice how his lips turned white._

Of course, for Uhura, the having of something has never really been enough. Understanding, that’s where the real interest lies.

_Two: James._

_When it comes down to it, Uhura has seen Jim pull the Kirk card exactly twice in his Academy career, and neither had been for his own benefit. If Professor M’adeil’s behavior was to he believed, Jim used his name once a week. Uhura did not like Professor M’adeil._

“ _Now James,” they say, sickly sweet and dripping patronizing condescension, “surely you aren’t that niave.”_

_Jim chokes, maybe on his words and maybe on a memory, and never speaks in their class again._

It’s a hodgepodge of information, strange tics and little slips she’s noticed. She reads body language with the same ease as she sings swahili, this isn’t strange. But this list…it’s not as random as she used to think.

 _Three: ~~devils advocate~~ the disrespect of the dead_.

_Kirk loved debates. He seemed to excel in them, shine brighter when he had an orbit to drag others into._

_“I will not,” he said, stiff and cold and formal in way some people thought he wasn’t capable of “take part in this farce. You want to debate the actions of a genocidal warlord? Fine, but do so without me.”_

_It was a good speech, she’ll admit. Impassioned. Furious. And not done._

_“If you want to dishonor the memories of those who died, at least have the decency to admit that’s what you’re doing.”_

It’s a puzzle. She can almost figure it out, almost slot the piece into order, but every time she thinks its done, every time the picture clears up a bit, he slots another piece out of place.

_Four: sand_

“ _You sure we can’t drag you to the beach, jimmy?” Gaila is draped over the couch Len scrounged up from somewhere, head dangling over the arm rest._

“ _Not today Gaila, if I get sand in my mouth I’ll have to bleach it out.” The lines around his mouth are tight, kind of the way they are when he laughs. But his hands are twisting a towel to bits, and he’s still white around the edges._

_There had been an incident the other day no one was talking about, and Uhura wondered if that’s why this beach trip was turned down. He’d seemed to enjoy the last one._

Every now and then she figures it out. Every now and then she lists it out, clear as day, and can feel the answer. She always lets it go. Something tells her its better this way. Some puzzles shouldn’t be solved.

Some puzzles deserve their secrets.


	10. Juvie is just the low budget version of space camp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cause there's no space.
> 
> Prompt: starphantom88 asked:
> 
> So I was thinking we know that Kirk got in trouble as a kid I think he ended up in juvie. What if as Captain he went to a bunch of juvenile detention places and talked to the kids because he understands
> 
> beauty-grace-outer-space answered:
> 
> Oh he absolutely did and he absolutely would. 
> 
> @trekkele, @anxiously-going Bones finds out Jim spent time in Juvie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: characters are in the drunk tank this whole fic, mentions of minors being locked up in abusive conditions.

Look, Len isn’t an _idiot_. Grumpy? Yes. Cynical? Probably less then you think. A Hopeless Romantic? That goes without saying he’s from _Georgia_.

But he’s not oblivious, like some people. He knows there’s shit in Jim’s past, of course there is. It’s Jim, and that boy is easier to read then he likes to pretend he is.

It takes him all of three weeks to pin down the shifty eyes and nervous twitches. Takes him three months though before he realizes that ‘shit’ might not cover everything in Jim’s file.

Takes him way longer then that to actually get the file.

It’s not that he wants it, mind. He much prefers to earn Jim’s trust and hear it from him, if Jim ever wants to tell him. And if he doesn’t, well. Jim’s not the first person to bury things to far down to actually reach. And whether or not that’s actually _healthy_ , Len isn’t Jim’s doctor and he doesn’t want to be. The kid sees a lovely and competent therapist once a week and that’s as much as Len needs to know. They’re friends. Thats better.

(If he wants to know more, if he wants to know about the knife in his boot and the snacks under his bed and the screaming, the screaming that starts when it gets cold and it gets quiet? Well. Then he’ll just have to stick around and make it worth Jim’s time, won’t he.)

(He was gonna stick around either way. Now he knows Jim needs him to, too. It’s nice, the vain little voice at the back of his head whispers, to be needed.)

It’s all puzzle pieces at first. A slip here, where Jim says something or does something that makes his mouth go tight and his eyes get shifty. And then its stories, soft ones whispered at night and calculated ones said in sunlight.

Len never lets Jim see the crescent marks in his palms, tiny scabbed reminders that the world isn’t fair and Jim never should have had to make those choices.

New Years in their third year is warmer then expected, and maybe that’s why they drank those third mojitos when they really shouldn’t have, Gaila egging them on as Uhura described something in swahili to some second year he didn’t recognize.

Either way they end up in the drunk tank down at the station, thanking whatever star was in season that at least they hadn’t been in uniform. And that they had ditched the red paint three blocks before the squad car had caught up to them.

Plausible deniability and all that.

Jim stretches, all wire muscles and languidly reclining on a bench that was older then both of them, making it look like a feather bed.

“Man cells are all the same aren’t they?”

He snorts, maybe agreeing maybe not, while Uhura shouts a ‘yeah they are!’ from down the hall. Now there’s a story he’d like to hear.

“Never thought I’d end up in one of these again. Glad it’s only temporary this time” Jim leans all the way back, pillowing his head on a balled up jacket that might be his, or might the guy’s that tried to kiss (one of them? All of them? It got blurry round 2 am) and didn’t get as lucky as he’d hoped.

“Why am I not shocked you’ve been in a drunk tank before, Jimbo?” He knows the Georgia comes crawling out when he’s drunk, drawling like molasses over glass. He slides down, letting the wall support his poor back as he sits. Gaila had wanted a shoulder ride and his knees just weren’t what they used be.

“You old man, you creaked on the way down dintcha? Do you do that for affect, or is actually natural?” Jim laughs when Len makes a complicated gesture that could probably start three planetary wars for the insult alone, and keeps staring at the ceiling.

“Can’t say I’ve missed it though. Got enough of bars down in the IJCC. They all smell the same, ya’know? At least they don’t stick ya in solitary here, or take the blankets and shit. Just a nice little room for drunk’n disorderly.”

In the morning, Len is gonna parse through that sentence and get quietly furious, the way doctors do when they know someone in charge should never have gotten their license. In the morning, he’s going to get angry, and then sad, and then buy pancakes for everyone, the way people do when there are things they’re too late to fix.

(In the morning, he’ll make a few phone calls, and get the vindictive satisfaction of knowing that several years ago an admiral, a captain, several dozen StarFleet personnel, and a Winona Kirk, descended upon a certain Iowan facility like a group of avenging angels.)

But that’s in the morning. Right now he’s a little fuzzy around the edges and only just conscious of the way Jim’s fists are grasping at air, twitching with nervous energy.

“No such luck, kid. You’re stuck with me now.”

And if he goes over to steal half the bench, cuddling around Jim’s legs, well. The infants on duty have probably seen worse.


	11. "there are starving kids out there who would love to have your dinner!" (prt 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "so why don't you ship it to them?"
> 
> Prompt: Anonymous asked:   
> Bones telling Jim to "eat it or starve" regarding some healthy food and immediately regretting it
> 
> and then grace tagged me in the post and i had to write it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: tarsus iv vaguing.

Len was at the academy for two reasons. Reason One: Find some joy in the career he used to love and maybe learn to love it again (but that bit was secret, officially he was here to challenge himself and that’s it the academy shrinks were getting out of him, alright?). 

Reason Two: hammer out some mutual respect and a decent relationship with his ex-wife so that his little girl didn’t have to live with two grown adults sniping over her head. Len figures maybe space is far enough for him to get some ‘perspective on the matter’. Whatever that’s meant to mean.

What he is not here for, and you’ll notice this reason is Conspicuously Absent from his list, is to babysit Actual Toddlers inhabiting grown up bodies.

 _Here’s looking at you Jim_.

Of course the truth, the one Len is a big enough man to admit, is that he doesn’t _really_ mind, under all the grumbling. Most days, Jim is like the overenthusiastic friend everyone has in middle school that breaks their arm chasing stray cats. Most days, Jim is only somewhat of a loose screw, and can keep his shenanigans to after class. Most days he genuinely likes Jim.

Today is really not most days.

Between getting up at 5 am for PT, which should be illegal on the grounds of cruel and unusual, followed by Med 101, something he could pass in his sleep thank you very much, and then Crisis Management: Dealing with Terminal Illness in a War Zone, a lecture that might give him nightmares if he actually had time to sleep, Len was having his energy and will to ~~live~~ graduate slowly drained away.

So when lunch came around Len had nothing but dust in his patience reserves, and Jim still had the boundless energy of a golden retriever. He and that tiny Russian kid were jabbering on and on about some theoretical warp core that could, hypothetically, take ships past warp 8.

In Len’s opinion it would probably take the sentient nervous system past anything it could reasonably handle, but who ever asked him?

They had wondered off, in search of a replicator that wasn’t crowded, Jim interrupting himself long enough to mention that he’d skipped breakfast (and didn’t the kid know better, he’d been up since 5 am too, couldn’t he take care of himself?). But since hes luck was about as existent as time travel, his blessed oasis of calm in the hell-hole that was the mess lasted about fifteen minutes less then he’d expected. (And two hours less then he needed.)

Jim dropped his tray to the table, letting it fall with the most obnoxious clatter Len had ever had the un-pleasure of having to hear. Kid didn’t even pause to apologize for the noise, just yanked a chair out so it squeaked and sat sideways, still talkin’ that poor kids ear off.

And who even let Cadet Babyface into the Academy? Kid looked like he should be doing his times tables.

It would have been fine, he tells himself later, trying to untangle the mess of a day, if Jim had just kept on about warp cores. Len had practice ignoring that. Even if they had switched to some advanced mechanics he would have had no problem letting their weird science wash over him.

But Jim just _had_ to go and moan about his food. Like the toddler he was, picky and bratty and _loud_.

“Oh eww,” Jim pushed the tray away from him, glaring at the bowl like it had personally offended him, “Why does that replicator always put beans in my soup, I know I didn’t ask for it, I swear these dumb things are programmed to annoy us into eating whatever they spit out.”

Jim could, when given the opportunity, talk about anything forever. Len wasn’t to keen to find out if that applied to whining as well.

“It cen’t taste zat bad, cen it?” the little Russian poked the bowl, more curious then anything, which was probably how he ended up in the academy in the first place. 

“I hate beans,” Jim slumped in his chair, “They taste like sand and they get stuck on the way down and ugh, the texture is what really makes the whole thing just, _dirt_ , like dirt, trust me -”

“Oh Apollo, James, just eat the damn soup or starve, no one here really cares that much.” Len snapped it out like one of those rubber band missiles, the ones that always seemed to hit the wrong person on the head. 

They’d only known each other for four months, but Jim had this funny way of shutting, all stiff and polite where most people go silent and angry. Len didn’t care. If he wanted to bitch about some soup, he could take it somewhere else.

(Later, he would know that Jim didn’t shut down like that when he was _angry_ , but when he was having a panic attack. Later, he would know that food was more then a thing for Jim, it was _A Thing_. Later, he would know that Jim hadn’t eaten in almost three days and slept even less. Later, he would know that the way Jim walked away from that table had been not angry, but _scared._ Andhe would know with a sinking feeling in his bones and a regret that welded itself to his spine.

Later it would almost be too late)

Now he just watched Jim walk away, and took another bite of his sandwich.

He really wasn’t here to babysit anyone.


	12. "there are starving kids out there who would love to have your dinner!" (prt 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doc from the discord requested a happy-ish ending for this so i added some.

Len needed a nap.

Scratch that, he needed several naps, a few days off, and an exorcist for the ghosts of textbooks thrown that were currently haunting his dorm.

It was like the Academy was waiting for you to collapse so they could use your body to teach basic physiology. Not that Len would know, having tested out of the class.

But for now, Len was going to have to be satisfied with one, single, measly twelve hour night nap. Eh he’d take it. He rolled over, half expecting to see Jim flipping through his homework as if they shared med classes, asking an oddly specific question about andorian antennas.

No Jim.

He’s halfway to the bathroom before he remembers that he was pretty much an asshole yesterday, to Jim and also in general, and he hopes it hadn’t been as bad his brain seems to think it was.

He stumbles into the kitchen when he realizes Jim is sitting at the table with breakfast. More accurately, he glaring at his breakfast, part of it cut into little bites and all of it still on the plate.

That sinking suspicion is back. There’s being weird about food, and being _Weird_ about food. Jim is quickly falling into the _Weird_ category.

They ignore each other, the way they always do before coffee, Len pretending not to notice that Jim keeps flicking over to him, and then back to his plate, hands folded neatly over his mouth.

“I was an asshole yesterday,” seems a good place to start as any.

The laugh Jim lets out is short and ugly. He can’t tell if it’s an agreement or something worse. “Yeah, you kind of were.”

He thinks that’s it he’s going to get, coffee getting thick and cold, when Jim lifts half a bite to his mouth and then puts it back down, throat working even when empty.

“I get… Food. Food is. Complicated for me.” Jim swallows, air seeming the only thing he can force down. “There are certain textures I can’t eat.”

“Beans.”

Jim grins. It’s forced. “Beans. And some meats. And the occasional vegetable. Being allowed to complain about it … helps. Sometimes.”

“Being told to shut up doesn’t.” Len offers, like the olive branch Jim is giving him and he’s starting to suspect he doesn’t deserve.

“Yeah,” Jim shoves the plate forward, then pulls it back. “It really doesn’t.”

“I’m sorry I was an asshole.” He doesn’t know what he wants. He wants Jim to stop looking like that, like he hasn’t been able to eat because someone who was supposed to be his friend told him to starve. He wants to apologize.

But he doesn’t know how to apologize for something like that.

Jim stops glaring at the pancakes. “Yeah. Happens to the best of us.”

He takes a bite.


	13. Re-Spects, Re-visited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ptompt: beauty-grace-outer-space  
> @trekkele and @anxiously-going I call upon you once again.
> 
> Maybe it's the middle of the night and a red alert happens. Maybe he feels a migraine coming on. Maybe he's just tired.
> 
> But talk to me about the first time Jim shows up in the bridge in his glasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote a thing like this but the concept it too good to not write again, so i did

Uhura knew, somewhere in the peripheral of her organized mind, that Jim has glasses. There was this one time with a guy in a bar and Gaila and apparently their dorm was too far when she panicked and Uhura came running over only to find Gaila wrapped in a fuzzy purple blanket, drinking hot cocoa and Len explaining why it was probably impossible that she killed the asshole with just a beer bottle to the back of his head.

And Jim had been wearing his glasses.

So in theory, Uhura knew that Jim wore glasses. But in the last three months he had been almost painfully professional, and for Jim that seemed to mean wearing a uniform at all times and his glasses never. So it was still a shock when he came stumbling onto the bridge, StarFleet Academy sweater hiked up over his stomach and hair doing it’s best to impersonate a solar storm.

At least she had a better reaction then Ensign Eshel, who looked at the captain and squeeked, turning the lively color of a rigellian cucumber. Not that Uhura blamed zher.

Kirk looked less like a captain and more like an undergrad doing the walk of shame at 5 in the morning. It didn’t help that he had a hickey on his left shoulder, and the sweater he was wearing was just too big to hide it.

He tugged his sweater, combing uselessly through his semi-sentient tribble nest hair and stood straight, forcing the tired slump in his shoulders to drop.

“Ok Lt Uhura, patch them through.”

The screen flickered, a half circle of Admirals blinking imperiously down on them.

“Good evening Captain Kirk, so kind of you - why are you wearing glasses?”

“Thats what we want to know” muttered one of the blueshirts at Uhura’s right, and she tried her best not to snicker. She’d almost forgotten how much fun it was to watch Kirk confuse people with his good looks.

Jim blinked, glaring up at the view screen with what Uhura could really only classify as a pout. “With all due respect sirs, I am four hours off a sixteen hour shift, I was told this is an urgent matter that needs my immediate attention, are you telling me you have time to comment on _my fucking eyewear_?!”

Uhura cackled into her elbow. Yeah, she had almost forgotten what Kirk was like, under the professional he could be.


	14. you can hear it in the silence (Bones, Triggers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: quirkyqueerveg asked:
> 
> Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (TOS preferably) and triggers please!

In some ways, Jim thought being a Captain was the first real step to retirement. Getting your hands dirty, crawling through jeffries tubes, accidentally switching all the replicators to only producing pancakes - those were things for Lieutenant and Ensigns, the stuff he’d gotten up to when he didn’t have a ship full of the brave and the bold relying on him.

“No,” he glared at the whiskey getting low in his glass, “now I get to do paperwork and submit promotions, and have to pretend that the new warp core proposals don’t have me _itching_ to get down there in a red shirt.”

Bones signed another padd with a flourish, letting the stylus fall with a clatter. “Blah blah blah, Jim. You know what I hear?” Jim almost said no, inviting a huff and a ‘ _see here you corn fed martyr’,_ but Bones beat him to the punch.

“I hear a man who has a truly lamentable memory, and apparently no recollection of that mess on Arcu-Et last week.”

“Oh _that_. Come now, Bones you can’t think that was an _adventure_ , can you?” Jim waved his glass, careful not to spill anything. Lord knows Bones would go mad if he actually spilled some.

“An Adventure? An adventure?? Listen here you corn fed twat, I don’t call patching you up with silly string -“

Jim leaned back, nodding at the right intervals and fighting a grin.

It was strange, for the new crewmembers, when they would see the Captain and the Doctor together. For those that didn’t know them, it seemed one sided, Jim always chattering about anything and nothing and pulling stories out of the same back pocket he kept his bluffs in when the conversation lulled.

Does the CMO even _like_ the Captain? Someone would inevitably ask, getting a laugh out of those more experienced. It never took very long for them to realize that yeah, he really did, but Doctor McCoy just wasn’t as verbose as Captain Kirk. What they had worked anyway.

But that wasn’t quite true either. It hadn’t taken long for Jim to pick up on it, with the long nights in medbay and the late shifts they worked on. The tightening of his shoulders, the way his knuckles turned white, when the silence started creeping in.

He never talked much after those shifts. So Jim started talking for him.

The Captain never asked. He never put it into words, never pulled an explanation from his oldest, most trusted friend on this ship. It was enough to know that Len needed it, the empty chatter and the rushing words.

It was enough, then, that he could help him forget the invasive silence that hung just out the ship’s windows.


	15. anger like a burning flame (Bones and Jim)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space  
> A prompt for anyone so willing (cough @trekkele @anxiously-going): 
> 
> The first real fight Bones and Jim have at the Academy, like their first verbal showdown that doesn’t end with them both unable to maintain their serious faces and in a heap of laughter on the floor comes because Jim runs himself into the ground (or gets hurt) and it scares the hell out of Bones. 
> 
> And Bones, still learning the ins and outs of James T. Kirk decides the first thing he should say when the kid comes to, bleary and confused in the hospital, is: “You mind telling me what the fuck that was before I put you on medical suspension and write my formal recommendation that you be removed from the Command Track? Because up there, in the big void you’re so desperate to run to? This shit won’t fly, kid. It will kill you, do you understand that? And you’ll probably take some folks with you at this rate.”

There is a space, between his third and fourth ribs, under his heart and behind the squishy bits he knows the names of because he’s a _doctor_ thank you very much, there is a hollow cavity reserved for his anger. And he tucks it there, lets it simmer while his heart beats a staccato rythm against the cage of bone that keeps him together. Lets it boil, lets it concentrate down to its finest point, before hollowing that space out with clawed knuckles and pouring it into the hands of those who put it there.

His Ma always warned him not to go to bed angry. He knows he’s not the calming kind, knows he needs to cut that cavity out with heated knives, pour it all out, heavy and unbidden, before it poisons him. But here, now, he can’t. Not just because it warms him, huddled in the curved seat beside the hospital bed, but because Jim is asleep, long lashes painting shadows on his flushed cheeks. He looks like he’s just napping.

(And he knows, he knows that the minute Jim opens those blue eyes, looking like cool rain on a summers day, that all that anger will just wash on down, and he _wants_ to be angry. Wants to push that boiling rage over so that Jim fucking _understands_. So that maybe he’ll see what a fucking fool he’s been.)

And he gets his wish, warmed and twisted, when Jim blinks at him lucidly for the first time in 48 hours, spitting it at him like an unwanted oracle, “You mind telling me what the fuck that was, _before_ I place you on medical suspension? Or perhaps after I write up my formal recommendation that you be removed from the command track? Because let me tell you, kid, up there in that void of stars your so desperately running to? Up there that shit won’t fly, Jimmy. It’ll kill you, _if you’re lucky_ , and probably some other folk if you’re not. Do you understand that?”

 _Don’t go to sleep angry, Len,_ his Ma used to tell him, _because it just boils up inside you._ He knows she was right, knows that pouring this all into Jim’s lap isn’t fair, probably isn’t right, but dammit the kids going to kill himself trying to prove something they already know, and he can’t watch that. Not again.

Jim just stares at him, eyes half shut and mouth unmoving. It’s like watching ice form, the way his face stays still, impassive, against the sudden onslaught of Len’s anger. Ice freezing around fire and he finds all of it slipping away. It burnt up like flash paper, and he’s been left tired, clutching at ashes.

He just doesn’t want to watch him die.

“Trust me Len,” Jim’s voice smooths out over sandpaper, slow and sure, “I understand.”

“Oh yeah, you do? Of course you understand, The Great Jim Kirk, never met a situation he can’t read, right?” It’s not anger now, it’s _annoyance_ , or Len would see the white around Jim’s mouth and the way his fists tighten into the stiff sheets. “So didja plan for collapsing on the campus green or did you just decide, ‘ _hey here’s a perfectly dramatic place to let my friends think I’m dying_ ’!” 

“Are you done?” Jim asks, and if that kid sounded any cooler he’d be shivering with hypothermia on top of everything else. Len found he didn’t much care - if he wanted to be treated like an adult he should’ve acted like one.

“No, actually, I am not done. What was it this time? Extra credit you don’t need? Maybe PT so that you can fight a Gorn? Or did you just forget to eat, like a damn toddler?”

Jim doesn’t blink, doesn’t twitch, “I didn’t forget to eat. -

“- thats not what your chart suggests-“

“-But sometimes my body doesn’t process calories right.”

And he can’t take it, can’t take how cold it suddenly is without that anger to warm him. “Bullshit,” he spits out, padd creaking dangerously under his fingers, “bodies don’t just forget how to do things like _process calories_.”

There’s silence, between them, heavy, and Jim doesn’t even bother trying to explain. “Mine does.”

“That’s not a fucking answer, Jim, you can’t just -“

“You’re not my pcp for a reason, Len. Have you ever considered it’s because I don’t want you to be?”

He won’t let that hurt him. Jim’s always been weird about medical, he knows that. And it _doesn’t_ hurt.

So it’s not the silence, in the end, that makes him cold. It’s how Jim doesn’t even care about how fucked up his body seems to be, how he’s just calmly accepting of _whatever_ this is.

“Trust me, I know what weakness like this can cost a crew Leonard. I just find it fucking hilarious that you think I don’t.”

(relevant tags: i dont knows where this went AT ALL but i liked playing with the difference in their anger jim gets quiet and cold len gets loud and busy uhura and gaila are in the doorway holding a bunch if grapes ‘uhhh we can come back?’ gaila says ‘oh no i want to see where this goes’ says uhura because jims body language is saying something very interesting star trek aos james t. kirk leonard mccoy also did u know genetics and the human body are super fucked up? because yes this is something extreme cases of starvation can cause who knew! len does. give him five hours to realize this and then murder board his way to a realization)


	16. Workout with a view (Mckirk)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: doctorginsberg asked:
> 
> Ficlet where Bones sees Jim working out shirtless

It was Uhura’s fault, really.

She had waltzed into his office two hours after shift ended, demanding that he join her in the gym.

Len raised an eyebrow, “I have reports,” he said, gesturing at the stack of padds and the mug that doubled as a glass for the double malt he kept on hand for bad days. Today it just held tea, but he had just started reconsidering that.

Uhura tsked and threw some clothes at him, pointing at the bathroom and raising an eyebrow right back. “Reports can wait. Ship’s News can get old real fast Leonard.”

It was tempting. They both new what Ship’s News really meant. “Did you finally find out why Ensigns Lroel and Tvrak broke it off?”

The slow, sweet smile she gave him would have fooled anyone else. But he had the privilege of actually knowing her. Reports could definitely wait.

Of course, the gym was already occupied when they got there, sparring mats laid out in a square and Sulu explaining something with a lot of hand waving to an enthusiastic looking Jim. He remembered tha kid mentioning something about Sulu teaching him to fence, but that had been weeks ago. Guess they finally got around to it.

They stepped away from each other, each holding a practice foil dipped in what looked like coloured paint, and moved on to the teasing banter that Jim seemed to think was a necessary part of any fight.

And then he stripped to the waste, tossing his shirt to the side as Sulu did the same.

It was mesmerizing, watching them circle each other like wolves, each step laid carefully and every breath measured. He could see the scars across Jim’s back pull tight, tense as his shoulders lifted and blocked Sulus foil from landing a hit.

They were dancing, each turn and every dip a calculated attempt to get closer, every flash of steel across skin an invitation to try again. Len supposed they were skilled, maybe more evenly matched then he’d expected, but the golden freckles across Jim’s back were far more interesting then the foils swinging through the space between them.

Jim leaped forward, laughing at something Sulu said and twisting out of his reach. The muscles in his back twisted too, planes and angles a map of something more then just skin.

He stumbled, cursing silently as the treadmill stopped automatically and hoping that Uhura hadn’t noticed.

Of course she had.

She smiled again, slow and sweet like she had before, flicking her ponytail over one shoulder.

“I told you this would be fun.”


	17. Bet on It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: clois4ever30 asked:
> 
> Contrary to popular belief, the biggest betting ring on the Enterprise does not involve Jim getting hurt on away missions, but on what new allergies Jim will discover on away missions.
> 
> Dialogue fic

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Look Len, the numbers don’t lie.”

“Oh no, see this I understand, that fool-child makes collecting allergies look like a walk in the park.”

“So what’s the problem? Don’t tell me it’s the _ethics_ , Len. Trust me, I’ve checked.”

“Chris darlin’ you know I have more self preservation then to accuse you of doing anything anti-ethical. And even if I would -“

“You aren’t dumb enough to do it in my hearing?”

“Exactly.”

“So what’s the problem Dr. McCoy?”

“Problem? Whoever said there was a problem? I just expect to kept up-to-date with relevant ships news in the future Nurse Chapel.

“And put me down for some alien fruit. Kids got an obsession with _chewing_ things.”


	18. Chris Pike/Phil Boyce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Anonymous asked:
> 
> 1\. line of fic: Phil Boyce barged into sickbay, looking downright irate for once “Christopher Pike, if you ever do that again, so help me god..!”

Phil Boyce barged into sickbay, looking downright irate for once “Christopher Pike, if you ever do that again, so help me god..!”

Chris blinked up sleepily, frowning as he tried to follow the doctors waving hands. “Do what? You shouldn’t shout you know, it’ll upset the ensigns.”

“I will damn well shout at whomever I please, _Christopher_ , if you keep insisting on throwing yourself headfirst into -”

“I didn’t throw myself,” Chris answered, incredulous and struggling against the blankets the head nurse had tucked around him. He sat up with as much dignity as he could muster, half covered in purple goop and fuzzy with drugs. “I tripped!”

Silence surrounded their little corner of the medbay as Phil glared at him. “Although,” Chris leaned forward with a little conspiratorial smile, “It was headfirst.”


	19. Bad Timing? (Chris/Phil)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked:
> 
> For the trope mashup: 60 + 74 Chris Pike/Phil Boyce?
> 
> 60\. Poorly Timed Confession and 74. Huddling for Warmth.

So its early into Chris’s captain-dom, he’s still a little bit of a disaster zone, like all starfleet command captains.

Phil hates away missions. hates them. so much. Chris always comes back bruised somehow, and possibly bleeding, and you know what? he has every right to be pissed off, these are milk runs Christopher how are you doing this???

Chris doesnt know either.

[insert angsty expositions about why do I care if he’s getting himself needlessly hurt, and why do I keep doing this Phil is going to hate me blah blah blah]

and there’s an away mission where it’s literally ‘go down to planet, pick pretty flowers, go home’. the native plants are supposedly some sort of miracle drug but whatever. Phil isnt risking it. he tags along.

Of course there’s some sort of seismic activity or what have you, and so the away team are heading back to the beam-up point. Chris and Phil are following behind, Phil babbling adorably about some of the scans he took and not realizing that the ground is shaking again until he practically falls over because the ground just disappeared. 

He grabs Chris on the way down out of instinct and they land half tangled on top of each other, and of course, of course the transporters can’t lock on to them and the weather turns or the hole they’re stuck in is freezing, and they basically have no choice but to sit in each others laps until the away team can get some help.

Its medically necessary cuddles, ok Chris, _shut up_. And stop squirming please.

“Is this a bad time to mention I broke my leg?”


	20. Chris is not a babysitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> insane-sociopath asked:
> 
> 1 s line fanfic ask: "James T Kirk!" Chris yells as he barrels across the sandy dune they've been abandoned on, chains still clunking around his wrists. "Don't you even think about putting that in your mouth!"

“James T Kirk!” Chris yells as he barrels across the sandy dune they’ve been abandoned on, chains still clunking around his wrists. “Don’t you even think about putting that in your mouth!”

Jim, looking like some sort of unholy cross between gangly teenager and curious toddler, shoved the apricot sized berry into his mouth and backed away guiltily. “What thing?” he asked, blinking innocently, as if he weren’t doing his best impression of a chipmunk. As if he hadn’t just eaten the food hostile aliens had left them with after chaining them up and air dropping them into a desert.

Chris paused, scanning the dunes with the sort of weaponized panic he found himself in frequently these days, trying very hard not to throw himself face first into the sand. Not only would it be pointless, it would probably chafe too.

But he wanted to.

“This,” he said, glaring over his shoulder at Jim’s unrepentant grin, “is the last fucking time I let Winona talk me into babysitting your dumb ass.”


	21. Everybody Knows (Mckirk)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Anonymous asked:
> 
> 47 and 63 with McKirk, mayhaps?
> 
> 47\. Not a Date and 63. Everybody Knows/Mistaken for Couple for Jim/Bones?

Babe thats their entire academy career.

But seriously, the problem with these ridiculous boys is that sometimes, when they spend time together, they don’t even realize other people are there too. Sometimes, when they spend time together, the whole world falls away and they aren’t Jim Kirk, son of a hero and legend, or Len McCoy, brilliant doctor and the man who cheated death. They’re just Jim and Bones and that’s all.

Of course just because they’re stupid and oblivious and no one else exists inside their bubble, doesnt mean that no one actually _exists_.

Seriously, Sulu once sat in on a conversation, left to get popcorn, came back, and then excused himself, with neither one noticing.

It was, he tells the bridge later, a very interesting conversation. If only they would have noticed him.

What follows is every single meet cute rom-com trope dumped on their heads, from locking them in a closet to ‘friends night out but no one else can make it’. The crew gets _really_ into it.

The punchline, of course, is when they end up at a fancy restaurant on shore leave and the dim lighting and ‘reservation for Mr and Mr McCoy?” (because, Uhura insists, Jim would take Len’s name. she _knows_.)

“Is this a date?” Jim asks, after the wine and the fish get whisked away and replaced by some sort of soup he swears is just cream of chicken named fancy.

Bones pauses, glances up, and frowns. “…is it?”

huh


	22. Big Fat Liar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space asked:
> 
> 1st line of a fic: Ok, so maybe it wasn't the *best* idea to escalate the prank war with Bones by stealing his shoes and hiding them around campus, but really, this was a bit much in the way of retaliation, even for Bones.
> 
> title is reference, cookies if you figure it out

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t the *best* idea to escalate the prank war with Bones by stealing his shoes and hiding them around campus, but really, this was a bit much in the way of retaliation, even for Bones.

Jim shifted, viscerally aware of the whispers and giggles behind him. As pranks go, it probably wasn’t the worst Bones could have done. It wasn’t even the uncomfortable, if you ignored the double takes and not-so-subtle glances and the way even the professors seemed to be smirking at him.

And, on the bright side, there was no way they would ask him to give a speech at the Kelvin Memorial like this. Maybe he should thank Bones, really throw him off his rhythm. 

“Jimmy?” Of course, he had almost forgotten that Winona was in town too. For his birthday mostly, but his shoulders seemed to be level with his ears now, because there was no way his Mom was going to let this go, _ever_.

Winona had her hat tucked under one arm, fist shoved into her mouth in an effort to keep the giggles in. Bones was dead. 

“Oh I’m so sorry Cadet-” “Mom.” “- you looked so much like my son from the back -” “ _Mom_.” “- of course silly me, my son isn’t _blue_ \- “ “ _MOTHER_.” Winona stopped, throwing her head back and laughing.

“Oh darling, I’m so sorry, but you do make a very fetching Andorian.”

“Yeah Jimmy,” Sam said, throwing his arm around Jim and ruffling his hair. His brother wasn’t even supposed to _be_ here, “It almost distracts from your face, you should consider keeping it.”

Dead. Bones was dead.


	23. these legends burn like stars (crossover au, mcu/star trek)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: lupanymeria asked:
> 
> 04\. Coffee shop AU and 22. Space AU for Avengers (2012) and a dash of Star Trek (AOS) ?

It’s after the whole situation in Beyond, after they get shore leave for whatever amount of months till the Enterprise B is ready, when The Ship docks.

Officially, it’s a diplomatic ship. Officially, it’s staffed by the finest diplomats and glad-handers and negotiators the Federation has to offer.

Unofficially? Well. Who calls a peaceful ship The Avenger?

And look, Jim understands the power of rumor better then anyone, he knows they can’t all be true. He also knows that this ship has some truly impossible treaties under its belt, and has defeated some of the nastiest raiders and pirates this side of the neutral zone. Knows that at this point, its a starfleet ship mostly in name, not always in practice)

“What have you heard about them, really?” Asks the other captain with a smile. The Millennium isn’t officially a starfleet bar, but it’s still a starfleet bar - the quiet kind, where officers go at the end of a day to unwind, or where captains come when their ship is in port and their crew is off causing trouble. Jim hadn’t come looking for company, but the other captain had sat down with a groan and smile, and looked like he needed a distraction. So Jim did the brotherly thing, got him a beer, and started catching him up on the local gossip.

“Well,” he stared out at the viewport, “I hear the engineer was once captured by Klingons. Heard it didn’t end very well for them.”

The blonde snorted into his bottle, scribbling on a napkin while he listened. “Does it ever?”

“You’d think they’d learn by now,” Jim laughed. “But the things you hear about The Avengers, I gotta say. They’re walking fairytales, you know?” the other man just raised an eyebrow. 

“Oh come on, like….they say the chief of security knows earth martial arts that haven’t been seen since the eugenics wars, and can take down an opponent three times her size. Or that the Doctor can cure anything, but once defended his medbay from over a dozen attackers. Or that while he’s the head of the diplomatic department, their Diplomat can chart a space map blind - and is an Asgardian.”

“That kind of stuff.” Jim takes another swallow, watching the Captains grin widen, eyes sparkling with some kind of joke. He feels like he’s missing something here. 

“What do they say about the captain then? If the crew are already legendary.” He leans back, legs stretched out and eyes on Jim, looking like he’s got no where else to be. 

He shrugs, because even Jim has limits on what he’ll believe, but some part of him does want to believe it. “See that’s where they lose me really, because apparently the Captain is a savior, frozen till the galaxy needs him again and raised from the dead for a shot at peace. An augment who hates war and wants to be a shield to those who need it. Apparently,” he takes a swallow, watches the other captains smile turn sad and dark, watches him stare at something over his shoulder a thousand miles away, “he’s the kind of man who can lead a ship of legends.”

He stands up then, sticks out a hand and thanks Jim for the drinks and the company. “Maybe I’ll see you around Jim, its not that big a station.” Jim nods, watching him go. There’s still something he’s missed, and he can’t figure out what it is.

The napkin was still sitting there, a sketch of Jim over his bottle, smiling out at the stars. Scribbled over the corner was, “Captain Jim Kirk: from one legend to another, SGR” 

He had never told him his name.


	24. always learn from the best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: beauty-grace-outer-space  
> Headcanon: We all learn things from our caregivers, whether we like it or not. 
> 
> And sometimes Jim catches himself doing something he clearly learned from Frank – making coffee a certain way, using a certain turn of phrase– and he hates it. 
> 
> @anxiously-going, @trekkele thoughts?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the person who put this back in my notifications, as it wasn't tagged properly and also tumblrs search function c'est merde 
> 
> Warnings: vague discussion and hints of child abuse
> 
> title is mean

They didn’t share many classes, by the time their third year at the academy rolled around - at this point they had completed the general credits and had moved onto the specializations that would, someday, make them the top in their respective fields.

Well, Nyota planned on being the top in her field. She only assumed Jim planned to do the same.

But as cadets-in-name-only, with minimum shipside experience and most of the academy behind them, they were sometimes given tasks like this one - to whip the baby faced freshman into some semblance of starfleet quality, one work shop and study group at a time.

It was a good system, she could admit, even if it meant she had six cadet shaped ducklings following her and Jim around for a semester. Jim, surprisingly, was a rather dedicated mama duck.

They worked well together, she mused, chewing on a gum stick while Jim chewed out four of their cadets for some reckless prank. It was funny because she was pretty sure he had tried something similar in his second semester. Of course, he hadn’t come close to being caught.

Uhura watched the cadets, Jim pacing in front of them with his hands waving widely. She doesn’t remember seeing him yell. He usually got quiet, when angry, and deliberate in his words. Now he was very clearly close to losing it, voice not so loud as it was clobbering his disappointment over their heads with every punctuated hand motion.

She thinks there are tears in one’s eyes. It’s impressive.

And it’s clear from listening to him that he’s not angry that they did it, he’s angry that they could have gotten hurt. Uhura decides it’s time to break it up - the cadets already look like they’re sorry they disappointed Jim, no need for them to push it into resentment territory.

“I’ve never seen you yell like that.” Uhura watches the cadets shuffle off as she moves next to Jim. He frowns, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“Yell?”

“Yeah you got some nice shouting in there. Got yelled at a lot as a kid? I still sound like my Mom when I shout at someone it’s a funny thing.”

Jim looks pale, shoulders hunched and bottom lip tucked into his teeth. “I don’t - my Mom didn’t yell at us. She just got really quiet and told us - oh. _Oh_. My uncle used to yell at me a lot. I didn’t-“

“Hey are you ok? You look like you’re going to be sick.”

She isn’t expecting it, when he turns desperate eyes on her, arms shaking. “I wouldn’t hurt them, you know? I just - they scared me, I wouldn’t hit them or anything-“

“Good because I’m sure Vress would kill you if you tried.” She cuts him off, stomach turning and realizing why some things about him suddenly made sense. “It might feel like we’re dealing with kids but you aren’t.” He swallows, turning back to the direction the cadets had walked off in.

“And I’ve seen you with kids. You’re good.”

“Yeah. People said that about him too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: You can always prompt me, Im on tumblr as trekkele too. All of these are open to adopting or extending if you want. Thanks for reading!


End file.
